Please use the comments to demonstrate your own ignorance, unfamiliarity with empirical data and lack of respect for scientific knowledge. Be sure to create straw men and argue against things I have neither said nor implied. If you could repeat previously discredited memes or steer the conversation into irrelevant, off topic discussions, it would be appreciated. Lastly, kindly forgo all civility in your discourse . . . you are, after all, anonymous.

3 Responses to “29 Amazing Facts and Stats about China”

That’s all you got? This is an unimpressive rehash of cliched data. A high-speed rail link from Beijing to London? Give me a break – after the recent crash and the ham-handed attempts to cover up the causes, no-one’s taking high-speed trains even within China any more.

How about data on how much of China’s nominal GDP growth is by virtue of Beijing-mandated uneconomic lending by and to SOEs, and what the real growth rate will turn out to have been once it’s all written down?

And as for China’s foreign reserves in relation to our US national debt, there’s a story about to break on the hundreds of billions China owes US citizens on defaulted bonds dating back 50 years or more, bonds that they paid on to the UK but have refused in the case of US holders, and how the rating agencies are giving them a pass on this selective default. See http://www.facebook.com/pages/American-Bondholders-Foundation/260051037352942

GDP data problem: if you believe, well, almost anyone with a degree, China’s currency is undervalued, and the dollar is (still) overvalued. So GDP numbers are really tricky. Just using PPP, the Chinese economy is about 2/3rd of the US economy (which is almost as big as the EU’s GDP). Not that different. And while it is perfectly reasonable to be able to get a billion Chinese in decent housing, using safe water and a small amount of electricity, it’s not so reasonable to assume you can get 100 million more Americans to own Cadillacs, employ gardeners and buy gold-encrusted iPads. In other words: Chinese growth could come from supplying fairly basic needs to a vast populace, while US growth comes from over-providing the rich, or providing basics to only about 100 million pretty poor people. It seems that China has an easier path to continued growth, while the US has to justify its current level of consumption.

US government debt is at least 3 trillion more than stated. Just because it’s owed by local and state governments doesn’t mean it isn’t government debt.

The US has been playing second fiddle to the EU in economic terms for a while now. It can take a very, very long time for economic primacy to translate to political or financial status. I don’t think that China will be more important than the US on the world stage for another 10 to 20 years. The EU, on the other hand, probably never will, because its vast economic might cannot be effectively harnessed for political and military purposes. It will remain a sleeping giant pending a “Cultural Revolution”-level episode.

The military stuff is just stupid. Americans have no established acceptance level for domestic casualties. Less than 3000 domestic casualties led the US to spend over a trillion dollar on vague military missions, a capitulation on privacy and perhaps even basic liberties. All China needs to do is what the US used to do to the USSR: finance religious zealots dedicated to the destruction of the US. I’ve got no doubt that powerful Chinese interest are financing Bachmann and Palin. In the end, it’s much easier to encourage suicide than it is to commit murder.

endorendil .. read thru that .. I think the one thing we have to remember > do capitalist actually run the show in China or does a central government that has grown over milleniums (opposed to the USA a short 400+- years) .. if the government has control over Labor and rawMaterials* they could control with a wall .. I could go on about protecting their infrastructure from the new world hoards but … (I’m supposed to be rooting for the USA)

I’m with you on that final line .. its so much easier and profitable to take a countries mind (away or dazed with BS)

* that would be all raw materials including oil (or a substitute)

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About Barry Ritholtz

Ritholtz has been observing capital markets with a critical eye for 20 years. With a background in math & sciences and a law school degree, he is not your typical Wall St. persona. He left Law for Finance, working as a trader, researcher and strategist before graduating to asset managementRead More...

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